


hoping's free

by Jenwryn



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Multi, Pregnancy, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 15:22:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2552378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the world that she knows: this world has walkers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hoping's free

**Author's Note:**

> I am not entirely happy with this story. I feel like it should have been something more. Should have had something more. Perhaps another 20,000 words of something more. But I have been wrangling with this fic, editing and writing and glaring at it, since _March_ , and enough really is enough. It was either post it, or bin it. I'm posting it, because that's just too many hours of my life otherwise and, who knows, someone might get some pleasure from it. Here's hoping.

_And the trick of it is, don’t be afraid anymore_

—Dry The River; Bible Belt

*

**.one**

It’s early, sun barely rising above the tree-line, but the air is already dry, is already thick, is already scratching heat down the back of Beth’s neck and inside the soft of her throat. She could do with some water, but she’s saving it, cool and heavy in a bladder hanging beneath the shade of her blouse. Saving it, as always, in case of worst-case scenarios. 

She squats on her haunches, watching the rabbits she’s trapped. They should be underground by now, by rights; should be tucked away coolly. Instead, dull and overheated, she can pick them up one by one and wring their necks without them screaming. She hangs them from a rope around her shoulders. The weight is comforting. Food is comfort. Food is safety. 

They’ll need to be field-dressed quickly, in this weather, though. She keeps her movements focussed. Keeps them swift. 

She watches her surroundings as she goes.

Checks the wind. The smells. The noises. Notes Carl’s location to the east, his lanky body moving with care through the gnarled trees of a long-fallowed orchard. There’s the surety of manhood in his broad shoulders, in the machete slung across them. 

Judith, too small to see over the thatched undergrowth, is no doubt tucked in close to his side. 

Michonne and Tara are further afield, scouting.

Daryl is out of sight, in the opposite direction, keeping closer to the van, closer to Rick, but he bird-whistles occasionally; short, sharp sounds, blending easily into the wind unless you’re really listening. Beth answers when she hears him. Longer notes. Gentler. 

The checking of her surroundings, the noting of her environment, has become second nature to Beth. Has become a habit, like breathing, and she’s barely aware that she’s doing it. She figures that she’d miss it, though, if someone forced her to stop. If someone made her less able. 

If someone half blinded her.

She hurts at the thought, second-hand pain still too close to the surface. She has to bend for a moment, rabbits slipping sideways to slap against her thighs; air thinned in her lungs, sweat beading cold on her brow despite the heat. Then Michonne’s teasing voice in her head tells her to stop being such a pussy, and Beth obeys; she stands up before Carl can spot her and come hurrying over to see if she’s okay. She wipes the cold sweat from her face, squints the salt out of her eyes. 

Scans, to check she hasn’t missed any of the rabbits. 

All of them collected, and hanging dead against her shirt, she gathers up the traps as well. Her group could stay here another day, but they won’t, and there’d be no point depleting the community entirely anyway - God only knows, they might have to come back this way in the future. 

The traps are awkward for Beth to carry on her own, even after she’s folded them down and tied them together, making them into pairs of netting and wire. They’re ungainly against the curve of her hips, against the mostly-still-flat of her stomach. She almost whistles for Carl, or for Judy, but they have her own tasks, and she can manage.

All got a job to do. 

Half way back to the van she crosses paths with Carl and Judy. Judy has blood on her face from where she’s scrambled too deep into the blackberry bushes, the red of it mixed with the purple of the berry juice. Beth knows both Carl and Judy will have eaten their fill of the berries while collecting for the rest of them: it’s what they’ve been taught, and it’s only common-sense. Judy has a calico bag of berries hanging from her back, her wiry little body carrying just as much as she can comfortably. Carl will have weighed it carefully in one hand before delegating it to her, Beth knows. He carries a bigger pack of his own, and a metal bucket’s worth; hunting knife hanging on a heavy rope around his neck, and a smaller row in sheaths along his belt. He’s a deft hand at throwing them, now, and, in the evenings when he’s not playing cards with the group, or sharpening his machete, he stands at the outskirts of their camp and practises. 

‘Got some sowthistle too,’ Carl says, by way of greeting, and then, looking Beth over, ‘You alright?’

Beth offers them a drink of her water, still just-cool beneath its leather. They take enough to be satisfied, but not enough to have their bellies swell. Beth drinks last, one large mouthful for herself, a few more for the baby growing inside of her.

 _Little bug_ , Daryl calls it, on the rare occasions when they acknowledge it. _Mini Beth_ , says Rick.

Judy separates from her brother’s side, to walk with Beth, as they head down the path they’ve trodden out these last few days. Yellowed grass breaks beneath the moccasins they’d traded for fresh meat and wild lettuce, in what’s left of Wichita. They don’t keep track of the dates so well anymore, but Beth knows this is their eighth summer since the world reset; knows the age of the girl beside her. Judy glows up at Beth, talking rapidly but softly – punctuated with the same environment-checks that the rest of them do – breaking off at at a noise, then starting up again as though nothing has happened. Judith has Rick’s temperament, Beth thinks; the girl is gentle as she works, and eager, and Beth leaves off mentioning the damage she’s done to her t-shirt because she knows Judy will help her mend it in the hours before dinner, and also because the new walker ear added to her necklace is pretty self-explanatory. Perhaps Judy is like both her fathers, really. Like her Rick Dad and her Daryl Pa. 

Frankly, Beth gave up on the conventional etiquette when Carl did. Carl was the one who’d taught Judy the names, once he’d worked the situation out completely. 

Daryl’s already back at the van, digging dirt up higher around the sunken fireplace. Gutted game is spread across the rocks behind him. Rick sits close by, silent, shotgun resting against his knee even though he’s still adjusting to using it without both his eyes. It doesn’t pain Beth anymore to look at him, to look at his face and the scarring there, even though it does pain her to think about it. Besides, Beth knows that Rick dislikes what he’s become far more than she could ever be upset by it; knows that he dislikes leaving them the work of survival and caring. This morning, though, it’s Daryl who looks the most sullen, frowning into his scruff of a beard, and Beth knows they’ve been arguing again.

Both their faces soften, though, when Judy announces their arrival in a clear, ringing tone. 

Carl’s girl, Avery, lights up as well. She’s only been with them these last few months but she’s family, Beth supposes. Beth likes her well enough but she’s still keeping her distance, emotionally. Too many people lost, even for her. She teaches Avery what she needs to know, though. Teaches her tricks with herbs, even as Carl teaches tricks with knives. Teaches her care and quiet. Teaches her to use an old liquid thermometer, and how to mark down her temperature, to make it less likely she fall pregnant if and when that becomes a likelihood. Doesn’t answer her unspoken questions directed at Beth’s belly, though. (Carol had taught Beth, before. Taught Beth with a digital thermometer, in those days, and it had screamed against the prison walls each morning. _A woman needs to know_ , Carol had said.) 

Beth doesn’t think about how Avery came to be with them, though. She needs her kindness not to flag. 

‘Hey,’ Daryl says, now, as Beth hangs the brace of rabbits from the side of the van. The van is old, but it functions; they’d only picked it up because they’d been able to charge a battery that fit, but they’ve grown as fond of it as they’re willing to, in this world, and it’s been faithful in return. 

They’ve drawn the line at Judy naming it, though. 

With the brace out of Beth’s hands, Daryl tucks Beth up the back of the van. The dust from driving gathers thickest there, and Beth can smell the scent of it through the heat; can smell him, too, warm and safe against her, as he leans in and steal as kiss when he thinks the kids aren’t looking. ‘Hey,’ he says again, and Beth wonders which one of them he’s soothing; wonders just how bad the argument between him and Rick had been, and whether both had lost again. Her men can be so stubborn, and she knows they’ve been wrangling about what Rick should or should not be doing.

Daryl cups his whole hand to her face and his half hand to her belly; free with his touches, as always, when he thinks the others aren’t watching. 

‘It was all smooth sailing,’ Beth says. Assures him, with her mouth against his collarbone. She can smell the oil on him, the grease; he’s been working on the van while they were out, making sure it’s ready for the next step of their journey. He and Carl have been scavenging parts. 

They’ve another week’s travel, at least, before they reach the next state line. Wyoming is their endgame, in theory - lowest population per square mile in the States, Beth can remember learning that at school - but Wyoming is a long way on foot and in jerry-rigged cars, and Rick is slower than he used to be. (He mumbles, of course, about them leaving him behind. Only when Judith isn’t listening, of course, because he knows she’d swear at him for being a baby. Only when it’s the three of them, together at night, and Daryl can punch him with one arm and curl him in closer with the other, and Beth can put her lips on his mouth until he shuts up, knitting them together like she’s done for so long).

Besides, hot as it is now, the weather will be cooling soon enough. Every day is shorter than the last. They’ve been thinking they’ll need to find somewhere to hole up before the snow starts to fall. Before winter. Before the baby. New Mexico’s about as far as Wyoming, and probably warmer at night. They’re still debating it in the evenings, sat down around their campfire, Michonne and Daryl tossing words at each other while Rick and Tara look on.

It’s not really about the place, anyways. It was Tara who’d pointed that out. It’s about having a goal. It’s about keeping moving. Beth’s long given up the idea of playing house. Hell, she thinks it took Rick longer to let go of that, than it took her. Daryl and Carl never knew home for long, before, and Judy has a different idea as to what the word means. 

You can have a home without a homebase, anyways. Beth has figured that out, now. It took her eight winters, but she got there. It took the shift of the seasons. It took the loss of the farm, the loss of the prison, and the passage of hurts that followed. It took the growth of Carl into manhood before her; took Judith morphing from baby to girl.

It took her finding refuge in Daryl’s arms, and then the both of them finding more in Rick’s. In their arms, yes: that was where Beth had finally learnt it. In watching them watch her. In watching them watch each other.

Home without a homebase. 

*

**.two**

There’s a lake on the map, so they head there; one reason is as good as another and they’re still talking about Wyoming, about Montana, still mulling it over as they sit in the dark at night and listen to Judy sleep. A lake sounds good.

It’s the full of summer, not as hot as it could be, but at least 90 degrees. Beth sits in the shade, on look-out, watching Carl and Avie swim circles. Beth thinks they haven’t slept together yet, but suspects Carl would have been talking to Daryl if there were a problem. Perhaps they’re taking it slowly. Perhaps they’re seeing if they’re really want they want. Beth can hardly criticise them for that. 

She watches Judy splashing, watches Judy doing safety checks amongst the playing, the glint of a sheathed-knife hanging on a rope around her waist even as she swims. Michonne is on official watch, perched on a rock that gives her a view point across the lake and the foreshore closest, her katana pale on her back after all these years.

Beth doesn’t miss the looks that Carl gives Michonne. She wonders if that’s the issue between him and Avery; Avery’s smile is understanding, as her gaze follows in the same direction. 

Tara interrupts the moment, leaning from the water to rest her hands against Michonne’s ankles.

‘C’mon,’ says a voice behind Beth, and it’s Rick, helping her up. He’s getting better with his limited vision (getting better at not arguing with Daryl about it), and he leads the way as he guides her back to the van. Daryl is shelling corn, picked hot from the side of the road on their way to the lake. His skin is red from the sun. 

Even with the roof popped the van is hot, but it’s dark with shadows inside. Beth can see the moment when Daryl notices them, though he doesn’t look up; it’s something in how he holds his shoulders. They haven’t seen any walkers here, barely any for miles, as if the population had long ago been swept along by herds. There are less every winter, and perhaps it gets colder, here, at the foot of the Ozarks. Beth thinks snow might fall when the weather is right, though she isn’t certain. 

‘Michonne ’n Tara’ve got ‘em?’ Daryl asks. He puts down the corn, soft tendrils of white caught on his fingers, on his thumbs. Rick and Beth reach him. They close the van door behind them, curtains pulled loosely, shadows barely cooler around them.

‘Yeah,’ says Rick, and Beth smiles. She can hear in his voice what this is. And it’s still summer, and there’s a film of sweat beneath her clothes, curved beneath her breasts; sweat in a line down her back. She’d thought this was a day for swimming, but it’s a day for this, too, as she pulls her dress over her head, pulls off her shorts and her knickers. Her breasts are hanging heavier now, stretch marks pale from the pregnancy they don’t talk about; lines on her lower stomach, red. She crawls on to the big bed at the back of the van, and slips a window open further. The heat is oppressive and it grows when Rick and Daryl join her, naked. Daryl radiates warmth from his sunburn. Beth is careful not to touch him there, is careful to keep her hands to the lighter places, to comb her fingers amongst the dark hair on his chest, usually protected by a ragged singlet. Rick’s tongue is hot against Beth’s back, his mouth even hotter, and he trails kisses along her then blows upon them; licks at her sweat, tongues the nobbles of her backbone. Beth’s not as skinny as she used to be, but they can still be felt. The three of them kiss, tangled in heat and limbs, slow and lazy and with no real direction, with no real demand, with nothing but aimless pleasure while they’re not needed for protection. Beth arches beneath Rick’s mouth, opens to Daryl’s cock. Slips between the two of them, between hands and sweat and lips. She sighs and she breathes and she falls through the heat and the sex and the comfort, falls as they come in slow movements, come in slow curves, come and the all of them in a mess of wet and sweat and feelings.

*

**.three**

Oklahoma gives them no greetings, its signs collapsed years before. 

They make their first camp near an old wind farm, the white structures still spinning at the sky above, but connected to nothing of value anymore. Judy doesn’t remember having seen them before, and it’s Michonne who explains. 

Beth vaguely remembers that people had hated the noise of them, but she finds them strangely comforting to look at. The low hum of them moving, like a life she barely recalls. She wonders if there are people out there, engineers, electricians, folks with the know-how to connect the old renewable energies up to their camps and their homes. Beth’s pretty sure there must still be some people, somewhere, who can. She figures that, one day, they’re going to walk over a rise and find a whole town lit up, glowing in the dark like life from another planet. 

Beth wonders what Judy would make of that. 

Beth wonders what people in a place like that would make of them. Of Rick, with his half-vision. Of Judy, with her walker ears around her neck. Of Michonne, with her sword, with Tara half asleep in her arms when the campfire dips low at night. Of Beth and her men, tangled together in their mutually needing mess. 

They’re travelling in a bigger convoy now, a third working vehicle picked up from a garage with a set of solar panels and a car battery charger. (Four walkers, dead; Carl had used a nail gun to put down two and Rick hadn’t titched when he’d heard it.) The third car is no flashier than the van, no newer than Tara’s truck, but it makes things less crowded, leaves less need for people to sleep in tents outside.

Beth can’t help but smile when Carl realises he can share it with Avery. Can’t help but smile when he leans into the girl to tell her, and she curls her fingers around his knee.

Their next camp has cattle, gathered by the shores of Lake Hudson. The roads here are straight, cut like lines into the ground. The cattle are noisy when they see the vehicles. Distrustful. Suspicious. Beth wonders how long its been since they’ve seen people, but they’re good proof that walkers are rare here - the cattle seem healthy, unbitten, less afraid than they could have been. 

Daryl takes one down, arrow between the eyes. They cut it and gut it, hang it for the night, pooling entrails into a bucket that they steady with earth. They would normally keep everything, but a cow is too much even for them, and the fire they’d need to smoke it would be bigger than they’re willing to make. 

The moon rises full as they heat the blood sausage Beth and Tara have made, eating to stuff themselves just because they can. 

*

**.four**

The leaves on the trees are turning yellow, the next time they run into walkers. It’s Daryl and Judy who find them, locked in what used to be the Louis Rose Hill Cafe. They’re messed up and skinny and generally disgusting. Daryl lets Judy keep the ear she earns, because Pa like daughter (and oh but Beth is waiting for her to grow out of enamourment with the story Carl never should have told her), but Daryl tells the adults, later, that they’d been a sorry bunch and barely able to put up a fight. They talk about diseases, about viruses that might attack viruses; talk about all the winters they’ve had and how there seem to be less of the walking ones every time the long snow melts. 

Beth doesn’t say how reassured she is that they’d found some. She isn’t sure if that’s more terrifying to her than her concern at their presence. But this is the world now. This is the world that she knows: this world has walkers. She’s frightened of the possibility of letting hope bloom too big. Better to have the gentle hope of living one day to the next, rather than of one decade to the following. 

‘Do you think they’re just… dying?’ she asks, in the almost-dark, cheek against Rick’s chest. ‘I mean… _dying_ -dying?’

‘Some viruses have a finite lifespan,’ says Michonne, carefully. It’s just one of those things that she knows. ‘It doesn’t matter what you do, they’re going to go eventually. It’s more an issue of whether you’re strong enough to survive them while they last.’

They’d seen bodies in what used to be Shawnee. Bodies old, and bodies newer, as though the walkers had just fallen down and stopped. The place had been a ghost town, no living people there to hold them up or to harass them, but the bodies had been uncanny. No fuel, though, and so the van had been left by the roadside; back down to two vehicles, and some of them in tents.

Rick strokes Beth’s growing belly almost absently. She tunes out from the conversation, focussing on his hand. 

They don’t speak about the baby, not really, though it swells large and strong before her, now, making her back ache. The nausea has passed, a welcome reprieve, but the internal kickboxing is a declaration of existence. They scoot around it, around the idea of it, but Beth knows that the baby kicks both her men, when she lays on her side between them. They don’t talk about it, though, nor the world its being born into. They don’t talk about the risks. They’ve had all those discussions, and the last time it had ended in a nightmare and a tiny grave beneath a peach tree. They’re not doing that again. They’re not. 

Rick strokes Beth’s hair; says, in a voice that cuts through her thoughts, ‘Hoping’s free.’

Later, she lies between her men, thinking about thinking, thinking about the books they might find in the public library tomorrow, thinking about the rest of their group, asleep around them, or on watch. She can feel Daryl resting a hand against Rick’s hip beneath the blanket, can feel the weight of Rick’s half-interested cock against her backside. It’s warm, with her men tucked around her. 

‘Hoping’s free,’ mumbles Daryl, half-asleep, as though he’s considering the concept. 

Beth smiles. 

They’ll hit up the library in the morning. 

*

**.five**

Men try to capture them in Amarillo, when Michonne and Tara are off on one of their hunting trips. The men are organised, and strong, but they keep their own women under lock and key, and so aren’t expecting the seven-year-old girl and the hugely pregnant woman to be as armed as they are. They get a nasty shock when it’s Judy who shoots first, kneecapping two of them before they’ve even attempted to re-group. Beth takes less kindly shots with her crossbow; takes out shoulders and hands, more concerned with their ability to fight back than their ability to run. Even Avie makes an effort, sharp knife she’d squirrelled away somewhere burying deep into the man who’d pushed her into a corner and put his hand down her pants; Beth feels truly impressed with the girl for the first time.

The men swear at them, howl at them, foul words and foul names, and Beth puts them down, emotionless. She orders Judy to untie her dads and her brother, and tells Avie to go see if any of the local women want out, or whether they’re happy to say despite being treated like belongings. 

Beth would like to be surprised when all of them choose to stay except one, but she’s isn’t. The woman who does want to leave introduces herself as Shanoa; she brings a basket of books, and a bag of food, and takes one look at Beth before admitting she’s a midwife.

Beth remembers then why it was that she’d believed in God for as long as she had. 

*

**.zero**

(It’s always the men, now; the men who cause the trouble in this world they’ve moved to. They’d come in the dark, a group of them. They’d pull the women away, pulled Beth away, though she’d broken someone’s teeth in the process; felt someone’s blood on her hands, hit their mouths, hit their faces, hit anything she could reach in the dark, in the panic. She’d panicked for Judy, still small enough then to sleep under the seat in the van, to keep out of sight, tucked behind blankets, for a case just like this. She’d panicked even more for her men, because men like this kill other men; kill to keep their territory, kill to keep their prizes won in the red of blood and the grey of gunpowder.

They’d taken the men, too, she finds out later. They’d sliced bits from Daryl’s left hand. To find out where the others must be, because of course they’d believed that there must be others, believed there must be more men. They’d cut lines to find out whether their food must be. The irrational paranoia of the long-ago lost. 

They’d taken Rick’s eye because he’d protected them. 

Because he’d protected Judy beneath the chair.

Judy will never know. They’ve made sure of that, at least.)

 

(Carl had killed them in their sleep. Slit their necks in the silence of the spring rain.)

*

**.six**

The weather has begun to whip cold against their tents in the morning. Beth had always thought of the desert at hot, but it’s freezing at night. The wind is harsh, too; have to make sure not to let the truck doors close on their own, else they’ll wrest themselves from your grasp. They’d erected the tents in the wind-free zone created by their trucks.

Beth cuts everyone’s hair in that quiet zone. Fistfuls, at first, then smaller snips. She makes Daryl go first, like a puppy who’s going to get more stressed about its bath the longer it waits. She doesn’t make his hair short, but brings it back over his shoulders. Gets it out of his eyes. Her scissors are sharp and she’s gotten good at this. Shanoa cuts Beth’s hair in return, long enough to plait but manageable, with just a curl of bangs because Beth can’t help herself, even after all this time; can’t help but to make things a little nicer on the eyes of those around her. 

(Beth had kept flowers in the little cupboards, back when they’d had the van, snuggled in mason jars, pressed in closely between one thing and the next. Daryl had brought them home for her, and Carl and Judy.)

She kisses Rick and Daryl’s necks when she’s finished, small bristles of cut hair sticking to her lips. 

*

**.seven**

They find the property a few miles from Flagstaff, Arizona. It must have belonged to a survivalist, tall fences to keep everyone out, and to keep him in. They find him, bones and rags, and debate what killed him: starvation, rats, monsters, himself. Beth takes bets on ‘himself’, but she keeps it quiet; helps the others as best as she can, though she feels the size of a whale. Her time is drawing near for the baby, she knows. It’s bearing down on her. Has shifted location, and she’s felt this before, knows what will come next. This baby has continued to move easily, however; has continued to fight and to punch against her, to remind her that it’s alive, that’s is okay, and that it’s as stubborn as the people it’s being born to. 

They park their vehicles facing out. They protect them beneath the cover of old tarpaulins, ready to be pulled away at any moment, should the moment come. They pull the batteries, though, close the caps tight, and keep them by the front door, for easy access - _grab your guns and grab your battery_ , the war-cry of escaping dystopeans. 

It’s cold, bitterly cold, in the old house with the leaky floorboards. 

Michonne and Tara have settled in a room out the back. Michonne spends much of her days on the roof, sitting watch, like Beth remembers a man doing on an RV, what feels like almost a lifetime ago. She can’t recall his name, and she doesn’t ask; the dead can stay dead, at least to her. 

Beth, Rick and Daryl take the room downstairs, nearest the kitchen. They light a fire and let the gleam of it spread across the space around them, let it bloom across their skins, let it shift the chill that had settled there with the first snow fall. 

None of them like the idea of settling down for any length of time, not yet, not even Shanoa, but the winter is hard, and the snow fall is heavier the further up the mountains you go. Winters are long, long as they used to be, perhaps, but they _feel_ longer than when Beth had been on the farm as a child. 

Every spring there have been less walkers than before, though, and this year they have seen so few to start with. Hoping’s free after all, perhaps.

Rick and Daryl make love in the firelight. Beth watches, her stomach heavy against her hands, aroused but not needing to participate. She enjoys the slow burn of them before her, enjoys the glow of the firelight on their shoulders, on their hands, on the lean lines of Daryl’s back, on the firmness of their cocks. She enjoys the sight of them, and the warmth against her.

*

**.eight**

The baby is born just shy of sunrise, light creeping slowly through the cracks in the walls. 

Shanoa finally asks whether the baby is Rick’s or Daryl’s, when she’s cutting the umbilical cord, knotting it close to the baby’s round little belly. Beth has no idea, and no shame as she explains that, no mind if the woman is going to judge her. But it’s the other side of the end of the world, and clearly Shan is past judging. She just smiles. 

“She’s perfect,” she says, and touches the baby where she lies against Beth’s breast.

The baby is a girl. They name her Greta, after Maggie. 

*

**.nine**

Spring is coming, and the wind with it. It’s warm across the plains, and curls up against the foothills. There’s still snow atop the mountains, but the peaks are higher than Beth has any intention of walking. She re-adjusts Greta against her chest, as she studies them. The baby is heavy and comforting, milk-scented and fast asleep.

They spent yesterday preparing to leave. Getting the vehicles going again. Carl helps her double-check the truck, make sure everything is in its place, while Daryl and Michonne check their weapons and their fuel. Judith hangs from her dad like a monkey, reciting a poem Shanoa had taught her - _there were green alligators and long-necked geese, humpy-back camels and chimpanzees_. He’s smiling, happy.

 _Home_ , thinks Beth, as she watches them.

*

**.epilogue**

The sign reads _Wyoming_ , and they haven’t seen a walker since snowmelt.


End file.
